COP28

The plastic bottle bowled over the blameless landscape,

Desert sands in rainbow colours shimmered and

shifted in the heat, where nothing else moved.

The burned stark black branches of trees bore

the memory of a people, who seldom cared,

and rarely looked to see their harmful ways.

Priceless jewels winked from their nests of gold

left behind while someone died, now undisturbed

except for a paint peeled door of an empty womb.

The dried dreary dust remembered a time, when

it had shape and form, a life with love and fear,

now it shifted with the wind of resentment –

for humanity had waged its wars, burned resources

and filled the breath they breathe with polymers

and their once bustling world with a hostile  heat.